Wednesday, August 21, 2013

This week Marian McPartland died at
the age of 95. Until two years ago she had hosted Piano Jazz, the longest running cultural show –more than thirty
years—on National Public Radio, and had interviewed and performed with all the
major jazz musicians of the time. Moving from her native Great Britain with her
American soldier (and musician) husband to the United States, she eventually
moved to NYC where she sought out her idol, bebop pianist Mary Lou Williams.
Her biographer Paul de Barros wrote that McPartland, instead of
competitiveness, had a ‘we’re in this together’ attitude, and she brought this
camaraderie to her radio program. The improvised conversations with guests, she
said, were like jazz itself, “spontaneous and free-flowing.” She spoke of how concerts communicated this
freedom (in part, I suppose, by modeling it, being with it) to audiences.

In addition to improvisation, McPartland’s
Piano Jazz and contemporary psychoanalysis
shared many things. For example, McPartland made her show about her guests, not
just about herself. She was open hearted and inclusive, admiring and accepting.
Quoting from NPR, “[S]he reminded
listeners every week that we’re all in this together.” I have to smile to
myself when I remember McPartland’s throaty voice, but today I smile thinking
of how jazz and improve itself (think Phil Ringstrom) can so inform an analytic
attitude. I smile to myself when I imagine sharing with McPartland the camaraderie
of how we both feel about our respective career paths. She said, “You have to love what you do.”

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

National Public Radio’s Morning
Edition this morning reported that Chia-Jung Tsay, a classical pianist and a
psychologist at University College, London recently published a study in Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences showing that amateur and professional musicians could best predict the winner
of classical piano competitions when they could only see, but not hear, the competitors performances, better able to
predict than even both those who either
only heard the performance, or, surprisingly, both saw and heard it. NPR said, “Incredibly, the volunteers were better able to identify
the winners when they couldn't hear the music at all,” suggesting that the original
judges “heavily over-weighted visual information…”

Since good looks did not seem to be a factor, Tsay concluded, ‘There
is something about visual information that is better able to convey cues such
as passion or involvement or creativity. These elements are very much a part of
high-quality performance.’This ability to predict
winners has also been shown to apply to voters predicting winners of elections when they watched videos of the political candidates
with the sound off. Both Tsay and the reporter seemed to intimate that people
actually do judge a book by its cover, but I saw Tsay’s finding to be
commensurate with what neurobiology has shown about the power of implicit
communication.

Because there is joy in the communion of shared emotional
experience, and as we are hardwired to read the intentions of others through implicit
cues (gestures, facial expressions, prosody, etc), and, furthermore, as these
cues are more important in understanding another than even the spoken word
(or, musical note, as it turns out), then it makes sense that visual cues about
the musician during a musical performance heavily contribute to the enjoyment
of the experience beyond just what is pleasurable to the ear. As it turns out, Tsay’s experiment adds to the
growing body of knowledge that the contribution of implicit cues is more heavily weighted by the human brain. She says so herself when she states that visual
information better conveys passion, involvement and creativity. I can’t think
of a greater joy than being caught up in a shared experience of passion and
creativity, be it in dance, debate, music, making love, or delighting in a
toddler’s joy at discovering an acorn can roll down the sidewalk.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Wounded Monster: Hitler's Path from Trauma to Malevolenceby Theo L. Dorpat
Next month on September 18 TBIPS resumes classes, including the first year course “Introduction to Psychoanalytic Concepts.” While the privileging of left brain narrative (e.g. free association) and insight (understanding via verbal interpretation) have long been emphasized by traditional training programs, TBIPS starts its instruction on the being with patients. What is an open attitude that invites possibility into the treatment room? An exercise to foster an open and accepting attitude includes having the clinician student imagine all the ways s/he might empathize with the most unacceptable of human creatures, such as the murderer, the homophobe, the pedophile.

Such is the call to stretch the limits of empathy in Theo L. Dorpat’s book Wounded Monster, which pointedly, and poignantly, describes consequences of chronic childhood trauma— occurring without comfort and secure attachment to mitigate it—specifically regarding its most egregious of outcomes, that which helped produce the likes of Adolf Hitler. Adolf’s father Alois dominated and abused Adolf and his mother Klara, both physically and emotionally. Like many children who must submit to abuse at the hands of those who are meant to protect and nurture them, Adolf developed impairment in emotional regulation, antisocial behavior, and did poorly in school. His depressed mother Klara, having lost three infants before Adolf was born, alternated between withdrawal and overindulging and overprotecting him. Stop the presses! Dorpat surmises that Klara was unable to provide a secure base for, or consistently nurture and attune to Adolf. Playfulness was absent in his childhood and he failed to develop interpersonal skills, withdrawing from or bullying others. It is speculated (perhaps reductionistic) that Hitler’s hatred of his father (whom he sometimes suspected was part Jewish)and wish to protect his mother was enacted in his hatred of Jews and his mega-maniacal wish to bolster supreme his motherland.

Dorpat’s book on Hitler is a smorgasbord on child development and on attachment and trauma research, as well as outlines what is essential to a healthy psyche capable of personal and interpersonal success. Dorpat applies “contemporary trauma theory …to explain …Hitler’s psychiatric disorders and personality malformations, especially his malevolence.” That Dorpat frames this knowledge in the context of Hitler’s childhood is an expression of Dorpat’s capacity to empathize with even the most heinous of human creatures. Perhaps we might utilize this study to open ourselves to the trauma of even our most “hateful borderline” (Slochower) patients, patients who often see themselves as worth hating.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

I found TBIPS as I looked on-line for a psychoanalytic
community to call home after moving to Jacksonville, FL following my Psy.D.
program at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Despite numerous psychoanalytic
supervisors, psychoanalytic courses, and personal psychoanalytic psychotherapy
while in graduate school, I still felt not quite ripe with my own education and
training. I honestly appreciated in myself that nagging feeling of wanting
more, intellectually and professionally. The clinicians I’ve admired most have
been the ones with endless amounts of training and they paradoxically combined
their experience and expertise with humble disclosures of feeling they didn’t
know enough and needed to know more.

My clients have
also indirectly nudged me toward getting more training, as their efforts to get
better and their “faith” and “belief” in my ability to help them were all taken
as hints as “Go get more training, girl!” I was drawn to TBIPS, in part, by its
offerings of long distance training via Skype and telephone. I am deeply
grateful to TBIPS for being my intellectual home, and an answer to this need
for professional sustenance and support. I’m a Filipino American woman, and
there’s a saying in Filipino called “utang na loob.” It is translated as “debt
of gratitude” and signifies the Filipino cultural trait of “reciprocity” in
relationships or the “debt of one’s inner self.” I feel indebted so, and deeply
grateful for TBIPS’ psychoanalytic training and for supervision.

Training and supervision at TBIPS have helped me feel
more connected to my clients, helped me to express that connection, to be more
human with my clients, and to listen in a particular way that makes sense of
our clients’ most troubling symptoms. Psychoanalytic supervision has sensitized
me to the ways that I may unintentionally shame clients in well-meaning
attempts to be helpful, and how to normalize intense feelings and emotions
reported by clients and mutually felt by myself as therapist. It has brought the
world of psychoanalytic literature to my home, suggesting relevant articles by
contemporary relational psychoanalysts, which I feel have connected me with a
wider psychoanalytic community that has such a rich history of thinking deeply
about common, difficult, tricky clinical scenarios. Ultimately I feel
stimulated and nurtured, and much less isolated as I do the day-to-day work of
inching towards emotional intimacy and understanding of clients. Clients report
feeling understood, accepted, seen, recognized, as we attempt to bear witness
to their emotional suffering. The results have been longer patient lengths of
treatment due to decreased premature terminations, more spontaneous expressions
of gratitude by clients, greater retention and return rates of clients, and
lower no-show rates.

Welcome!

Welcome to "Contemporary Psychoanalytic Musings," the blog of the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studiesor, as it is conveniently known, T-BIPS. We invite you to post your comments on psychoanalysis and books, film, conferences, the media, art, theory, clinical situations, current controversies, social issues, and anything else as seen through a psychoanalytic lens. We look forward to a spirited dialogue with you.Lycia Alexander-Guerra, M.D.TBIPS PresidentGabcast! Welcome! #3

Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies

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About TBIPS

In 2005 a group of psychoanalysts & psychoanalytic psychotherapists convened to explore possibilities for meeting the educational needs of clinical professionals in the Tampa Bay area. Out of those discussions evolved a new institute, the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies. Consistent with the spirit of collegiality, openness, and diversity that inspired its development, the new Institute is non-authoritarian and democratic. Training programs utilize progressive and classical concepts which have been endorsed by contemporary critiques of psychoanalytic education. Believing that the capacity to think psychoanalytically best develops in an atmosphere of inquiry, open dialogue, and active participation the founding members sought to integrate these values into the structure of the new Institute and into the process of training. A precedent of collaboration and mutual respect for the contributions of all faculty and candidates was established enabling our mission to gain immediate representation in our actions.